Abstract
Intravenous (IV) injection is widely used to supply Ringer solution directly into a vein in hospital. Generally, a passive injection method has been used, which causes the inconsistent flow rate of fluid and inappropriate control of injection time by a patient. It leads to an unnecessary nurse's overwork and decrement of IV injection's effect. To solve these problems, flow control infusion pumps have been developed. But because of relatively heavy weight and high price, its usage has been limited. In the present study, a new automatic IV injection system is developed. It is installed with a small pressing mechanism driven by a small electric motor to regulate the flow rate by pressing tube. Proportional integral derivative (PID) feedback control algorithm is applied to control the electric motor. The system is smaller in size and uses lower power than the existing commercial product. The newly developed system is also installed with networking capability, which enables monitoring the status of several automatic IV injection system at the same time.
